Summer 2015:Angels and Demons

Angels walk among us, the Bible tells us. And so do demons. Yet they often take unexpected forms and shapes. They may come to us as strangers, as sudden insights, or as great trials. As James Reho describes in this Summer 2015 issue of Parabola, some devils are not to be exorcised (instructions for exorcism are included in this issue) but must be endured until they yield insights that can come no other way. “If there had been any power in you, it would have sufficed had one of you come, but since the Lord hath made you weak, you attempt to terrify me by numbers,” said Saint Anthony to the devils that tormented him. “Angels are agents and co-workers with us human beings,” write priest Matthew Fox and biologist Rupert Sheldrake. They spark our intuition and inspire us—“they get us to move.” They shed light on us from a cosmic perspective, but not if we scrub them out of existence as we tend to do in our secularized, scientific culture.

Selected Articles - Summer 2015 Issue:

The idea of a “fall of man” is not confined to Christendom. Krishnamurti in his famous dialogues with physicist David Bohm on “The Ending of Time” asked the question: What went wrong in human life? The twentieth century came with the thought that not only God was in hiding but that He was dead. G.I. Gurdjieff proposed that in early history man was physically altered to prevent him seeing reality, an action that although reversed carries on by momentum. Certain cultures speak of a “dreamtime” when there was another order of reality in which man was not divided from the divine. Whatever the terminology or explanation, we find ourselves in separation and seek the way home; yet we know of the separation only because it has been revealed to us. We seek only because something is trying to find us. As Simone Weil pointed out, the New Testament says much about God seeking man and nothing about man seeking God.

by Roger Lipsey

One of the first and endless lessons of spiritual community is to find one’s way somehow—perhaps brilliantly and with friendship, perhaps awkwardly or scarcely at all—with those who, like you, have arrived from points unknown and show no sign of going elsewhere. People of different kinds seek the same light. Unlike in temperament, background, and experience, in gifts and blanks, in willingness and fears, they reach one and the same destination: a spiritual community that called from the distance and drew them in. Whatever the focus may be—a traditional faith, a teaching or way of life—it makes urgent sense to those who respond. They may know a great deal about the community’s concerns but are unlikely to know many of those whom they will meet and with whom they may associate for years, even a lifetime.

It was a bitter cold, rainy December twilight in Manhattan several days before Christmas. I was waiting in the persistent drizzle for the Sixth Avenue bus to take me and my four children uptown from Greenwich Village to our apartment.

A Conversation with Isaac Bashevis Singer

Photographs by Abraham Menashe

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991) was a Polish-born Jewish-American author awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978. He wrote and published only in Yiddish. Among his best-known works were the novels The Family Moskat, The Magician of Lublin, and Shadows on the Hudson, and the story collections Gimpel the Fool and A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories, awarded the National Book Award for Fiction in 1974. Parabola spoke with Singer in 1981, in the middle of a Manhattan heat wave. —The Editors

A Young Woman Finds Her Way

by Betsy Cornwell

I was Head Angel in The Nutcracker the year I turned eight. I didn’t get the part based on skill or grace, or even because I looked angelic: I had an awkward short haircut, and next to my blonde, giggling classmates I was swarthy and glum—hardly a classic cherub. But I was the tallest girl in my class, and on that basis alone I was given a tinsel halo, an electric candle, and the title of Head Angel. My sour-faced dance teacher reluctantly led me to the front of the line at our first rehearsal. She pointed out two taped X-marks on the stage with a bony finger; I was to shuffle from stage left to stage right, a line of progressively daintier angels in my wake, and then stand still and grin innocently while the real ballerinas danced behind us.

We parked in a field and walked half a mile down a road with the other pilgrims, guided by hand-lettered signs that read “apparition.” It was the first Sunday in June, and the Virgin Mary promised to appear after dark on the first Sunday of every month. I thought this unlikely, and Roman Catholic Bishop John C. Reiss of Trenton indicated that he agreed. He directed the faithful not to come.

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Parabola in the Classroom

Designed to provide educators access to primary sources from some of the world's most distinguished religious scholars and writers. Twonew lessons have just been published...

Future Themes and Submission Deadlines

Fall 2015 - Intelligence: Submissions by June 1. Winter 2015-2016 - Free Will and Destiny: Submissions by September 1. Spring 2016 - The Divine Feminine: Submissions by December 1.

Fuji Declaration

The initiators of The Fuji Declaration invite the global community to celebrate the inauguration of The Fuji Declaration. The inauguration will be celebrated with three uplifting events leading up to the Symphony of Peace Prayers 2015 where thousands will gather to set in motion a Divine Spark Activation starting from Mt Fuji out to the world.